Wednesday, 13 June 2012

Although it probably goes without saying never to mess with a bad-tempered militia boss like Dragan Nikolaevich, it's probably equally fair to say that you should never act like a needlessly violent jerk around Koko Hekmatyar either.

Thus, Dragan's attempts to intimidate his opponents backfire spectacularly, and before we know it we have a full-on gunfight at point-blank range on our hands. Somehow, these Balkan Dragons seem to be a decidedly incompetent militia who fail to inflict a single casualty on Koko's men, whereas her troops wipe the floor with this militia shower. Only Dragan himself manages to escape the slaughter (albeit with a serious hand injury), taking the leader of the doctors being transported by Koko with him.

Despite surviving the immediate threat, the next question for Koko and company is how to get off the ground and escape in one piece given that Dragan will be looking to shoot them out of the sky as soon as they take off. It's here that Mao comes to the fore, commandeering a canoon and strapping it into the plane to use as a line of defence against the milita's surface-to-air armaments. This is more than enough to allow them to escape unharmed when combined with the other defensive weaponry at Koko's disposal, but what of the missing doctor? With both a huge bounty on Dragan's head and her honour at stake, Koko's work isn't quite done yet, as she manipulates Scarecrow into coughing up the bounty while doing the legwork of capturing Dragan using her own forces to ensure that everyone comes out a winner - provided you aren't a supporter of Balkan militia groups, that is...

Overall, this was probably one of the strongest episodes of Jormungand we've been able to enjoy - action-packed to its core and with a storyline that neatly tied everything up in a hugely satisfying manner. White Fox continue to struggle a little with animating gunfights, but this was nonetheless an improvement over what we've seen earlier in the series and ignoring the incompetence of their rival militia there was enough tension in the midst of the action to pull it off, bolstered further by Koko's increasingly terrifying abilities to manipulate and strategise to her advantage. Heck, they didn't even go down the obvious route of killing or injuring Mao, which seemed like a given from his introduction last week. There are still a couple of episodes to go, mind you...